


every name an abdication

by availedobscurity



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Gen, anyway have a thousand words of a single headcanon, it is not a desired degree, mag is mentioned, this isn't a reunion fic but it does involve some degree of post-frp interaction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2019-05-30 06:50:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15091367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/availedobscurity/pseuds/availedobscurity
Summary: When Juno Steel said his name, the detective’s mouth resented each syllable, staking them through the middle and flattening them into the ground below. They bled there, and Peter watched them deflate.





	every name an abdication

“Oh, your _name,”_ Juno Steel didn’t trust himself enough to wear his arrogance correctly. What would have been a sneer on anyone else lay on his face a scowl. “And a whole lot that was worth, _Peter_.” Juno spat his name like it poisoned him from within.

Juno had never used his first name before. He only ever called him _Nureyev_ , only used the name that followed like a prisoner shackled to a line. He had wanted to hear the way Juno said his name for so long, wondered whether hearing the letters that he once was aloud would have the power to make him something real again. 

Now he knew. When Juno Steel said his name, the detective’s mouth resented each syllable, staking them through the middle and flattening them into the ground below. They bled there, and Peter watched them deflate.

“Maybe not to you.” Peter held himself up, rigid and unshakeable, disconnecting every feeling he had. His brain was moving too slowly, like it was trying to wade through some viscous waist-height fluid. He needed to get out. The detective should never have found him here at all. He should never have _let_ the detective find him. And he should never have wanted it. 

He had never been sentimental before, not really, and he didn’t know what to do to stop himself. The rolled-up canvas at his back was almost forgotten as the two of them hissed at each other in the dark, no more finesse than two sparring cats batting at one another in an alley. He took a step back, preparing some parting words of finality--maybe a simple, _Goodbye, Juno. I don’t expect you’ll be seeing me again_ \--but Juno spoke first.

“Not to anyone. Peter Nureyev doesn’t exist. There was never a Peter Nureyev in New Kinshasa. Not even on Brahma.” Each proper noun was a curse laid at his feet. “At first I thought, maybe he’s not from Brahma. Can you believe that? I was sitting around trying to...” He broke off. This time the loathing in his voice wasn’t directed at Peter alone. “But I don’t think a guy can lie so well his own memories join in on the fun. Though I guess I shouldn’t put it past you. But a name? You’ve already gone through plenty of those without a second thought. So who are you, really?”

Peter halted his escape, overtaken by a still fury. _“Peter Nureyev,”_ he said, burning hot and poisonous with vengeful regret. “You assume I would leave my name for anyone to find? That I would put my one vulnerability in the open for anyone to stumble upon?” He had thought Juno was smarter than that, but of course his intelligence failed when it came to trusting him. He knew that, and it still disappointed him every time. “You can’t find a record, so it must have all been a lie. Brilliant detective work.”

“Quit the games,” Juno said. “Rita looked. She didn’t find anything. They didn’t even know who you were when you left New Kinshasa. So who are you?”

Juno wasn’t lying. He was a terrible liar. But he was wrong, forever blinded by how much of Peter Nureyev he did not want to be real. “Of course they knew who I was. There are ways to hide a name after the fact, detective.”

“Not so Rita can’t find it. If she says she can’t find ‘Peter Nureyev’ anywhere, Peter Nureyev never existed in the first place. So who the _hell_ are you?” Juno wasn’t just angry, some calm and unaffected portion of his mind told him. This was a lady betrayed.

That made two of them. 

Peter couldn’t even process what Juno was trying to say, his whole being pushing against the violating wrongness of it. Of course he was Peter Nureyev. No one else was. Peter Nureyev was the name his father had given him, the name Mag had called him, the one star he could use to navigate back to himself when his thoughts became too many voices in too small a space. Juno was wrong, Juno was reactive, Juno wanted Peter to be lying. Juno didn’t trust him and he wanted to be right not to trust him, given that he’d thrown a whole life of seeing the stars away for his irrational suspicion. So of course Juno was wrong. Suffering from confirmation bias. Nothing more.

It was the name Mag had called him.

When Peter Nureyev had first tried his hand at lonesome survival, he had joined a group of adults for an evening. While Peter tagged along behind them, they got to reminiscing about something. Pets, or maybe siblings--he wasn’t paying that much attention, only trying to think about where his next meal would come from and eyeing a striking watch on his companion’s wrist. The conversation didn’t have anything to do with him. The watch certainly did.

_-and that was around when my cat got picked to be a companion animal on a royal charter,_ one of the men had said. There was a moment of silence.

_What?_ his friend had asked.

_Yeah, it was really sudden. I came home, and my mom said a rep came by and asked if our cat could serve as a companion animal for the queen, which was weird because of how old that cat was, she must have been like thirteen years old, but I guess--_ He had stopped walking, then. _Oh my god. My cat definitely died._

His friends burst into laughter at once, ribbing him for his childlike trust, and Peter had used the distraction to empty their pockets and slip away without being noticed. But he was still young enough to look back then.

He remembered the man’s face. It was empty, as though he was only just then realizing that there was no ground beneath his feet. Like he’d always been walking on empty air.

Peter had laughed then, too. For the first time in a while. Then he ran.

“Nureyev?” Juno asked. Peter detected concern. He couldn’t make himself move, or speak. He was only standing there, a statue.

“Mag told me my father’s name,” Peter said when he triangulated the location of his tongue and its controls. “Mag told me a lot of things. Some of them might have even been true.”

He was full of static. It buzzed thick and endless, and if there were any thoughts in him it consumed them before he had time to process.

Juno scoffed, a self-centered fool half-steps behind. “We’re not talking about Mag, we’re talking about--” The room echoed with the dropped pin of Juno’s quiet, “Oh.”

“Oh,” Peter repeated, emotionless.

Juno moved towards him. “Nureyev? Are you--?”

“I’m not anything,” the thief said, stepping out of Juno’s reach. “It seems you were right all along.” He handed Juno the canvases he had so expertly stolen only minutes before. Juno took them automatically, unable to do anything but what was expected of him. “My name was just as worthless as you said. I congratulate you for your astuteness.”

Juno said something he couldn’t hear. It had the cadence of a name.

Everything sounded like water in his ears. “I hope your client appreciates how cleverly you apprehended their trespasser and restored their post-colonial art collection. You’ve done a commendable job, detective.” His eyes wouldn’t focus on anything but the space that was right ahead of them. “It looks almost as though no one was ever here at all.” He turned around and walked out, even-paced through the front door, heavy and without anchor, anonymous and adrift.


End file.
